This Mother's Day Video Shows How Pointless Google Glass Is

Karyne Levy, provided by

Published 8:42 am, Sunday, May 11, 2014

Maybe I'm heartless, but when I watched this commercial for Google Glass, where a man travels from San Francisco to India to surprise his mom for Mother's Day, the only thought that popped into my head was: why?

The video, which was filmed by alumni and students at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts for the Glass Creative Collective, is lovely: it shows him getting an envelope from his wife before he makes the journey. Then it shows him traveling many miles and using various modes of transportation to get to his mom. In the end, he taps her on the shoulder and she's surprised to see him. And he has one more surprise for her, which is in the envelope he's schlepped with him across the world.

I won't spoil the surprise for you by telling you what's in the envelope, but it's pretty obvious. Here's a hint: it rhymes with monogram.

So although it's meant to tug on the heart strings, it's also meant to show you how convenient it is to film a long journey from the comfort of your own face.

Throughout the video, we see that the man's hands are free to hold the envelope, eat some food, and read a book.

He can use his hands to hail a cab, hang on for his life, fix his watch, and even pay the driver when he's done.

And the video doesn't make it clear why I couldn't just do this with the cell phone that I already own. Or a GoPro. Sure, I couldn't hold a secret envelope with two hands, but that's what backpacks are for.

It's no secret that people haven't really jumped aboard the Google Glass train. As my colleague Jay Yarow pointed out, Glass is a "product plagued by bugs, and of questionable use, that's generating a lot of buzz because people want so desperately to have some new gadget to latch onto, and fear being wrong about the next major technology trend."

Google needs to step up its marketing efforts, it's true, and it needs to try a little harder to make Glass relevant. We're still waiting for a compelling reason for anyone to want to wear Glass, let alone shell out $1,500 it. And marketing videos such as this one, though pretty to look at, are sorely missing the mark.